Rumsfeld is a really sympathetic and warm guy

I mean, having obituary letters signed by a machine is extremely thoughtful when you compare it to the actions of our secretary of domestic affairs, Johan Remkes. Mr. Remkes has been on a holiday in Thailand since Boxing Day, when the earthquake struck. This puts him in the perfect position to visit Dutch survivors in the country, since he's there already. But alas. Mr. Remkes is staying in a nice, comfy, private cabin on a remote island 250 kilometers from Phuket, and he damn well intends to remain there.

Well, he was going to, anyway. It was just announced he will visit Dutch victim identification crews who are doing a well-needed but gruesome job over there. Still, this is too little, too late, for the members of those teams are used to hardship. Mr. Remkes should have visited the people that aren't: the Dutch tourists, of whom more than 200 are still missing, making this potentially the worst disaster for the Netherlands in several decades. The Bijlmer accident, in which an El Al Boeing ploughed through some flats in Amsterdam, cost 43 lives. Mr. Remkes could have made some effort to console some of the families of the missing. Alas, most of the survivors are back home already.

At least Mr. Rumsfeld had the decency to send a letter.

Update 21.49: Turns out this is the 'international flights' terminal of the island Mr. Remkes is staying. Must be the Thai equivalent of Hoogeveen Airport.

19:54

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Vote for me!

Thanks to you guys I am now one of the top 20 contestants in a Dutch business plan contest, about which I've written before here.

However, it's going to be a long and hard battle. The finish line is still weeks away, on the 31st of January, so I beg you to keep on voting for me.

You can do so once a day.

In order to save you the hassle, here is a very easy way of doing it. Just click here. Please bookmark it and visit it every day until the end of this month.

Thanks!

13:36

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Some obligatory New Year's Resolutions

• I am going to lose weight. A lot, to be precise. Yes, I know the entire world tells itself the same thing. But I will pull it off. And to create enough peer pressure (even though I'm arrogant enough to think I haven't got that many peers), I will be writing a column about it in the Dutch edition of Men's Health. 60,000 readers should be enough pressure to keep it up. Oh, the amount of weight? About 20 kilograms. The first 2 are gone already, partly thanks to the nasty stomach flu of last week. As a benchmark, I'll be posting my weight loss per week. We are currently at 99, the end goal is 78, or my weight two years ago, before I started my own company and grew into a fat pig.
• I am going to run in the Utrecht City Marathon on the 28th of March. Not the full 42 kilometres, but the 10 kilometre version, together with my pal Blauw Oog. My goal is to do it within 55 minutes, which is still very slow compared to the world record, but then again, I'm no athlete. Blauw Oog has a personal goal of 65 minutes, but he has a habit of aiming too low. I can do 10 kilometres in 60 minutes quite easily, so I've got 3 months to shave off those 5 minutes.
• I am going to party quite a bit more. There were too many 80 hour working weeks in 2004, so a little R'n'R would probably be called for every now and then. I guess this resolution may be one of the hardest to keep, me being a workaholic and all that...

Let me conclude by wishing you all a very obligatory but heartfelt happy 2005!

8:55

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